Jane Holmes is chief executive of Wokingham-based charity Building for the Future which provides support and activities for disabled children.

She set up the charity after her daughter Kitty was born with severe cerebral palsy

One of the things that upsets parents of disabled children most of all is people having a patronising attitude towards their children.

It upsets the children even more.

Like everything though, it’s important to look at people’s intentions.

People very rarely mean to insult, but that’s not really an excuse.

It may be hard to put oneself into a disabled child’s specialist support-shoes, but with a bit more thought and consideration a lot of feelings could be spared.

Even compliments can cause a heart to sink.

Wonderful as it is to be told your child has a lovely smile, you do wish that the kindly person telling you so, would focus more on the sentence your child is painstakingly trying to spell out, or the Herculian way in which they are struggling to co-ordinate their arms for long enough to stroke their dog.

This week Scope, the charity which historically supports people with Cerebral Palsy, released an educational postcard which included the line ‘people with Cerebral Palsy have good days and bad days’.

How true this is. But let’s face it, that’s hardly unique to those with Cerebral Palsy.

Scope’s response to my complaint was that the sentence was written by a group of young people and the intention was to describe to their friends how living with Cerebral Palsy is different from day-to-day.

Fair enough, but Scope is a major national charity which may not solely support people with Cerebral Palsy any more, but certainly used to.

You’d perhaps be forgiven for hoping they’d know what offends and what doesn’t.

It’s very simple, really.

Just treat disabled people with the same attitude as you would anybody else.

If you are dying to say something nice, which many people are, staying away from generic compliments will make you sound a lot more sincere.

It’s not a problem to talk about a person’s disability, far worse for it to be the ‘elephant in the room’.

Asking questions in a respectful manner shows you are interested and want to learn.

Showing you appreciate and value people with disabilities as people first and foremost, is a very good start.